I will not pass in silence the cunning and trickery of the squid, which takes the colour of the rock to which it attaches itself.  Most fish swim idly up to the squid as they might to a rock, and become themselves the prey of the crafty creature. cf. Theog. 215: πούλυπου ὀργὴν ἴσχε πολυπλόκου, ὃς ποτὶ πέτρῃ τῇ προσομιλήσει τοῖος ἰδεῖν ἐφάνη Νῦν μὲν τῇς ἐφέπου, ποτὲ δ᾽ἀλλοῖος χρόα γίγνου, κραιπνόν τοι σοφίη γίγνεται εὐτροπίης . Greg. Naz., Or. xxxvi.:  πολλὰς μεταλαμβάνων χρόας ὥσπερ τὰ τῶν πετρῶν εἱ πολύποδες αἷς ἃν ὁμιλήσωσι, and Arist., Hist. An. ix. 37:  καὶ θηρεύει τοὺς ἰχθῦς τὸ χρῶμα μεταβάλλων καὶ ποιῶν ὅμοιον οἷς δη πλησιάζῃ λίθοις.  Such are men who court ruling powers, bending themselves to all circumstances and not remaining for a moment in the same purpose; who praise self-restraint in the company of the self-restrained, and license in that of the licentious, accommodating their feelings to the pleasure of each.  It is difficult to escape them and to put ourselves on guard against their mischief; because it is under the mask of friendship that they hide their clever wickedness.  Men like this are ravening wolves covered with sheep’s clothing, as the Lord calls them. cf. Matt. vii. 15.  Flee then fickleness and pliability; seek truth, sincerity, simplicity.  The serpent is shifty; so he has been condemned to crawl.  The just is an honest man, like Job. So the Cod. Colb. and Eustathius, who renders Justus nihil habet fictum sicut Job.  The Ben. Ed. suspect that Basil wrote Jacob and Job.  Four mss. support Jacob alone, who, whatever may be the meaning of the Hebrew in Gen. xxv. 27, is certainly ἄπλαστος only in the LXX., and a bad instance of guilelessness.  Wherefore God setteth the solitary in families. Ps. lxviii. 6.  So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. Ps. civ. 25.  Yet a wise and marvellous order reigns among these animals.  Fish do not always deserve our reproaches; often they offer us useful examples.  How is it that each sort of fish, content with the region that has been assigned to it, never travels over its own limits to pass into foreign seas?  No surveyor has ever distributed to them their habitations, nor enclosed them in walls, nor assigned limits to them; each kind has been naturally assigned its own home.  One gulf nourishes one kind of fish, another other sorts; those which swarm here are absent elsewhere.  No mountain raises its sharp peaks between them; no rivers bar the passage to them; it is a law of nature, which according to the needs of each kind, has allotted to them their dwelling places with equality and justice. cf. Cudworth, Int. Syst. iii. 37, 23:  “Besides this plastick Nature which is in animals, forming their several bodies artificially, as so many microcosms or little worlds, there must also be a general plastick Nature in the macrocosm, the whole corporeal universe, that which makes all things thus to conspire everywhere, and agree together into one harmony.  Concerning which plastick nature of the universe, the Author De Mundo writes after this manner, καὶ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον, διεκόσμησε μία ἡ διὰ πάντων διήκουσα δύναμις, one power, passing through all things, ordered and formed the whole world.  Again he calls the same πνεῦμα καὶ ἔμψυχον καὶ γόνιμον οὐσίαν, a spirit, and a living and Generative Nature, and plainly declares it to be a thing distinct from the Deity, but subordinate to it and dependent on it.  But Aristotle himself, in that genuine work of his before mentioned, speaks clearly and positively concerning the Plastick Nature of the Universe, as well as that of animals, in these words:  ‘It seemeth that as there is Art in Artificial things, so in the things of Nature, there is another such like Principle or Cause, which we ourselves partake of:  in the same manner as we do of Heat and Cold, from the Universe.  Wherefore it is more probable that the whole world was at first made by such a cause as this (if at least it were made) and that it is still conserved by the same, than mortal animals should be so:  for there is much more of order and determinate Regularity in the Heavenly Bodies that in ourselves; but more of Fortuitousness and inconstant Regularity among these mortal things.  Notwithstanding which, some there are, who though they cannot but acknowledge that the Bodies of Animals were all framed by an Artificial Nature, yet they will need contend that the System of the Heavens sprung merely from Fortune and Chance; although there be not the least appearance of Fortuitousness or Temerity in it.’  And then he sums up all into this conclusion:  ὥστε εἶναι φανερὸν ὅτι ἔστι τι τοιοῦτον ὃ δὴ καὶ καλοῦμεν φύσιν.  ‘Wherefore it is manifest that there is some such thing as that which we call Nature,’ that is, that there is not only an ‘Artificial,’ ‘Methodical,’ and Plastick Nature in Animals, by which their respective Bodies are Framed and Conserved, but also that there is such a General Plastick Nature likewise in the Universe, by which the Heavens and whole World are thus Artificially Ordered and Disposed.”